Fortune cookie

A fortune cookie ( Chinese cookie in Quebec) is a Confiserie, been used in the Chinese restaurants with the the United States and the Canada, in which a small piece of paper is inserted where one can read a prediction or a maxim, often humorous. Invented in the United States in the neighborhoods of the First World War, the idea of the fortune cookies was transposed thereafter on Internet, where one can consult on many sites a Aphorisme or a prediction of the day.

Chinese restaurant with Internet

The invention of the fortune cookies was an aubaine for the Chinese restaurants where, contrary to American manners, one was not used traditionally as Dessert S. Servis with the or accompanying the addition, the fortune cookies are prepared according to a very simple receipt with flour, eggs, sugar and water. The first fortune cookies were made with the hand using rods. While this manufactoring process remains in the back-stores of the Chinatown of San Francisco, the fortune cookies are from now on mechanically manufactured by a hundred specialist companies. One of the largest manufacturers, Wonton Food Company of Brooklyn, produces four million per day of them. Export and manufacture are spread more and more in other countries. In 1992, Wonton Food Company introduced the fortune cookies in China under the label “Authentic fortune cookies American”.

One of the consequences of the popularity of the fortune cookies under the sign of the restoration was their emigration on the systems Unix and Internet in the form of predictions or of aphorisms of the day. In their electronic version, the fortune cookies can decorate a Almanach or a éphéméride or be attached to a Email. On the very many sites which are devoted to them, they can also be the subject of collections or be generated by a random program. In the course of road, the fortune cookies also appeared in the cinema, with in particular the film Fortune Cookie of Billy Wilder in 1966, entitled the Large one Combines in French. In the literary field, one finds inter alia a new satirist of Cyril Mr. Kornbluth, Manuscrit found in one sanded Chinese , appeared in 1957, in which the main character discovers in the fortune cookies the answer to all the questions that humanity is posed.

Origins

The origin of the fortune cookies is discussed - so much so that it gave place to a truth-false lawsuit between the towns of Los Angeles and San Francisco in 1983. According to the thesis to which one joins, the fortune cookies would have been:

invented about 1915 per Makoto Hagiwara, Landscape gardener Japan board and owner of a garden of in San Francisco, at the time of an exposure;
invented about 1920 by a Pastrycook Cantonese of Los Angeles, David Jung, to comfort the homeless people according to the ones, to promote its trade of Noodles according to the others;
inspired by the will tsujuira senbei , kind of sanded Japanese in which small tickets for in love one are folded nowadays;
inspired by the example of the Chinese soldiers, who communicated between them by means of messages registered on rice paper and dissimulated in yuèbĭng , kind of made cakes of seed paste of lotus, at the time of an insurrection against the Mongolian S at the 13th century.

Aphorisms and predictions in all kinds

The first messages inserted in the fortune cookies by David Jung were composed of biblical quotations and maxims of Ésope and Benjamin Franklin. Its competitors having counteracted with maxims of Confucius, certain authentic, others invented of all parts, Jung organized in the Années 1950 the first contests of drafting of aphorisms for cookies, thus exploiting a humorous seam promised with a great success. The Années 1960 transfer the appearance of the first advertizing slogans, followed in their turn of political slogans, then of messages personalized for festivals and birthdays. The Années 1970 transfer to flower the aphorisms with connotation cryptic, absurd or embarrassing, to which in the Années 1980 the figures amulets intended for the players of Loterie were added. All these kinds and well of others are found nowadays on Internet, where sites general practitioners and specialized sites in the quotations coexist, the predictions of bad taste or bad forecasts, the generators of cookies for blogs… The whole, tells Donald Lau, professional writer of maxims and assistant editor of Wanton Food Company to New York, " it is not to have the too complicated spirit. To think in sentences of ten mots."

Examples (translated from English) coming from an anthology of fortune cookies found in restaurants

Confucius known as: You have a heart as large as Texas.

Thanks to your mélodieuse nature, the moonlight is always with go.

All is not lost yet.

Exemples (translated from English) coming from a generator of fortune cookies on Internet

One seldom sees monuments with the glory of a committee.

the goal of science is to make better mouse traps; that of nature is to make better mice.

Make you forgive now - tomorrow you will not feel perhaps more guilty.

the heart does not know the rainbow if the eyes did not know the tears.

French terminology in 2005

To date, there does not exist any properly French equivalent of fortune cookie . To indicate those which one serves in the restaurants, the Québécois Office of the French language recommends the term Chinese cookie (although a fortune cookie is neither a cookie nor Chinese, following the example “Chinese Pâté”). To indicate those which one finds on Internet, the French-speaking data-processing Dictionnaire proposes fortune of the day (but it seems to be until now the only one to do it). In the made up Word American, fortune means the good one or misfortune which one can draw with the fate, and cookie indicates a kind of sanded (the word cookie being also used in a another direction in Informatique).

Internal bonds

Fortune (program)

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